[swaggyBoatswain]

DoTA has come such a long way from being just a warcraft 3 mod. All those random pub matches I used to play with w33, analyzing all the patchnotes and .w3g replays before youtube was a thing, to shitty garena pubmatches, to a full fledge esports remake, to going to my first Dota TI2 international 2 years back, and now AI is being thrown in the mix. I wonder what the future of DoTA will look like now

[captain_crabs]

Yeah. Dota's the one game I've consistently played my entire life. Seeing it bloom and blossom from just this thing I knew & enjoyed into the whole primetime, then merging into broader tech...this is awesome!

Crappy garena, banlists, vs 5 ai in wc3 when no internet... :')

[emilsedgh]

But the popularity is a bit declining, isn't it?

[nstart]

Going to go off on a tangent here.

Yes and no. By raw numbers it certainly is in a state of decline. But put in context, it may have been inevitable. It has everything going against it.

DotA is a team game.

It's incredibly complex. Not easy to pick up. Mastery requires 1000's of hours. And it's miserable to play at the start.

The community is toxic. So random teams in a public match when you are new to the game compounds. Even if you aren't new, one way or another random teams can quite often be a frustrating experience that you just don't feel you have control over.

Compunding even further is the fact that once you start a game you are locked in for 35-55+ minutes. That can be 35 painful minutes of feeling crap.

Compare that to rising battle Royale games, and you get solo games you are allowed to be bad at and slowly get better in. And the time you spend in it is directly related to how much fun you have. And the games have a definite time cap. And the mechanics are simple. This holds true for a lot of other up and coming online casual multiplayer games.

Point is, Dota is destined to be niche as a game that is played.

What i would love to see is how the game can change externally to become more accessible to viewers. From client changes to community changes to changes in presenters, valve needs to step up to help people participate as spectators. The potential for the game to generate significant money lies in their pro circuit and it looks like valve is really stepping up their involvement here. Hopefully this continues.

The (somewhat poor) parallel is something like rugby or squash. Fairly arcane rules. A lot of people don't remember when they last played the game. But they can still be heavily invested in watching.

[swaggyBoatswain]

^ This

DoTA is incredibly complicated, and has more compounding interest towards tactical strategy + gameplay + teamwork + skill execution, more so than battle royale.

In battle royale, if you played awful you just die. Then you start a new game. With DoTA that death impacts your game in the long run, putting your team at a disadvantage, since you just fed their carry. But comebacks do happen though

Going to DoTA TI:2 internationals, where all the major esports teams compete is different than anything else you've ever experienced.

Its like going to the superbowl. Except, everyone knows how to play football, usually on an average / above-average level. But, instead of a few hours, its 8+ hours, for 7+ days. It gets EXTREMELY intense, just because you because you can relate to how difficult manuveurs are, and it isn't dictated by things like how much weight you can squat in football (For faster sprinting / agility, etc). There's many little minor mental and physical gymnastics that DoTA2 pro players do 100xs better than your average player.

Comparing this to Fortnite competitive mode, its not the same. Its more closely tied to watching something with less strategical depth, such as tennis. Tennis is still exciting for its own reasons, but its mostly skill based execution, and mostly a solo game. Even if you played 2v2.

I watch both fortnite and dota2 competitive every so often